CHARLES BLACKMAN

Australian and International Paintings, Christie's, Melbourne, 23-24 November, 1999, lot 45
Private collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above

Brian Finemore, 'Charles Blackman', Annual Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria, vol. III, 1961, cat. no. 23, illus. p. 24

Good condition. UV inspection reveals two very small areas of surface abrasions and possible retouching upper centre (below right hand tree) and upper left (below and between left hand trees).
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Towards the end of 1954, Charles and Barbara Blackman visited Joy Hester and Gray Smith at Avonsleigh, and ended up staying six months, 'the first time ever in my life I actually lived in the country; The artisty remembered that 'I painted all day and the only time I went for a walk it was night.'¹ These night-time rambles not only inspired moonlights such as Windmill (1955, private collection), but also more subtle nocturnes. In Stargazer (1955, private collection), a reclining figure is embedded on a dark ground in a veritable milky way of daisies; in the present work; on a dark hillside under a twilight sky. The trumpets of lillies and daffodiles, lilies or honeysuckle blaze like comets and the daisies shine like stars or nebulae.

The diminutive figure of the girl at the right, not much bigger than the flowers behind her, transitional; in character halfway the earlier schoolgirls and the later Alices. With her eyes close she appears quite oblivious to the riot of foral beauty behind her. Perhaps she is sleepwalking or perhaps she is an image of the nearly blind Barbara. Either way the figure well illustrates Brian Finemore's view that Blackman's 'basic theme is lonliness; the isolation of the individual in either pain or pleasure'. ²       

1. Thomas Shapcott, The Art of Charles Blackman, Andre Deutsch, London, 1989, p. 18
2. Brian Finemore 'Charles Blackman', Annual Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria, vol III, 1961, p. 23